Advent is a time of preparation. Each year we are challenged again to focus our minds and hearts on the great mystery of God’s infinite love for us. We are to remember that this divine love, which is far more transcendent than any human words can express, took on our humanity in the womb of a young woman, Mary, and came among us to free us from the self-inflicted burdens of our sins. Knowing and believing this, this Advent season is a focused time for us to ponder our shortcomings, and our failures to live in accord with our faith, and to make the effort to prepare a way for the Lord to enter into our hearts and minds once again.
This is not easy, of course, because the fact of the matter is that life is often difficult. It can feel very burdensome at times. In particular, we can often feel spiritually burdened, especially by things like the guilt we carry concerning something we’ve said, done, or not done in the past that caused injury or harm to another, or the terrible weight of anger and even hate that is associated with unresolved past issues. Sometimes we are burdened by worries about the future, imagined or real. These can consume us, even paralyze us with the terrible weight of fears of one kind or another. These worries about the past are real, but can possibly be resolved. Our fears about the future are often unreasonable, even irrational and both kinds of worries can make us sag under the awful weight of overweening self-concern. God wants to free us from this burden. He wants to help us turn our eyes away from these burdensome self-concerns. This is what this preparatory season of Advent is all about. It is a time in which we are called to remember that God, out of pure love, came among us to free us from both our real and our false burdens.
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Mt. 11: 28-30). Advent season calls us to repentance, to let go of all that burdens us, that holds us down, that prevents us from living our lives in accord with the will of God who is love. Guilts, angers, resentments, and feelings of vengeance are millstones around our necks. We prepare for the coming of Jesus during this Advent season by bringing our burdens to Jesus, by laying them down before him, by letting go of them, so that we can prepare a clean and well lit space for him to be born again in our own hearts and souls not just at Christmas, but every day of our lives.
During this Advent season, God is once again calling us to be present to Him in the here and now. For, in reality, it is in the present moment that we meet and come to know God and develop a personal relationship with Him. Now is a good time, then, to make space for God in our lives. If the habit of setting aside time for prayer has not yet become a part of your daily life, now is the time to begin the practice of it. Find a regular time and a quiet space where you can be alone with God, in his presence. He is always present to you, just give yourself the space and the time to recognize it in the midst of all the day’s noise.
In the deepest sense of reality, Jesus is always inviting us to come to him and let him be the source of both our strength and our joy in every present moment. Welcoming His Real Presence into our hearts, here and now, is the real source of our lasting joy. The coming of Jesus, Emmanuel, into the world reveals the truth to us; that it is in our acceptance of God’s love, and in our humble, obedient submission to it, that we are freed from the burdens of our sins and find the true rest that our hearts so deeply and so naturally desire. Let us, then, let go of the burdensome yokes of our selfishness and our over-sensitive self-concerns and let him replace them with His light and easy yoke of love so that we may, in turn, selflessly love and serve all others, especially those who have the greatest needs, just as he loved us.
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